Bernard Hopkins
Bernard Hopkins
Bernard Humphrey Hopkins Jr.is an American professional boxer who has held multiple world titles at middleweight and light heavyweight. He reigned as middleweight champion from 1994 to 2005, unifying and successfully defending his title a record 20 times. He won the IBF title in 1994, later adding the WBC, WBAand The Ring magazine titles in 2001, and became the first man to simultaneously hold world titles by all four major sanctioning bodies when he won the WBO title in 2004;...
ProfessionBoxer
Date of Birth15 January 1965
CityPhiladelphia, PA
I've got a history of frustrating guys and making them angry.
The media here know that there's the possibility that I can pull this off. I'm confident. Confidence comes with work. When you prepare yourself and you know you're going into combat with all of your bullets, you have the confidence to go into battle.
The middleweight division is one of the most exciting divisions in the sport. Fighters can punch like heavyweights and have the speed of the lightweights. You have the best of world worlds.
You think it's hard for me when I go in the ring and fight? That's the least of my problems. I think about the five years that I did in prison. I think about the nine years on parole. Nothing - nothing! - can compare to that struggle. I'm telling you, from being an ex-convict with 30 convictions, a degree nowhere to be found and black? I'm done.
Tavoris Cloud might actually be hungrier than me. How often do you hear a fighter say that his opponent is hungrier than he is? I don't need hunger. I'm motivated by my desire to prove that I'm different and that I can still silence the critics.
You're not going to see a new Bernard Hopkins. I'm too old for that crap. I think what you will see is something different that I know I am capable of doing.
There's always a chance you will see something new in a fight. Especially in boxing.
I have the philosophy that I'm different. I have the body, the well-being and the experience. Now the teacher gets to show the student that he's worthy of the lesson. Let me show him through experience.
I'm 100 percent clean. I'm doing this off of nuts and bananas.
Did you hear what this idiot just said!? He said it's not about the W...It's everything about the W with me!
I'm lining up my troops to go to battle with. Tarver is the man at light heavyweight. He has the credibility of the fans and media, and that's what counts. That's why I am taking this risk, but I am taking it by preparing myself with good people.
I got knocked down. Anybody could be knocked down, anybody can be knocked out, but it's not what happened, but what happens next.
I was knocking guys out in the streets before I knew how to throw a jab and keep your chin down, In most neighbourhoods, the guy that could fight gets respect. You got in the parties free. I never had to pay the dollar because people were scared of me. But back then I was ignorant.
The streets was basically my parents.